Tuesday, July 05, 2005

20,000 Shriners were in town this weekend for their annual convention, so of course I had to go down and see them parade across Pratt Street. There's something compelling about Shriners, and it's not just the multitude of vehicles they drive: at the parade we saw mini tractor-trailers, flying carpets, ATVs, customized motorcycles (including a recumbent motorcycle!), miniature antique cars, the "sidewinder" (a Jeep that drives sideways), a calliope, a giant fez, and many many more. No, there's something more to it, a kind of mystery about the whole thing that's simultaneously fascinating and amusing. They're like mini-Masons, only with a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Twenty or thirty years ago, the Boumis (Baltimore's version of Shriners) were on the verge of dying out. My dad told me once that they actually came to his company to see what they could do, marketing-wise, to prop up the organization. My dad wrote a proposal but they didn't want to spend the money, and then in the eighties they had to give up their elaborate temple on Charles Street, which was subsequently razed for a gym for Loyola. Somehow I think that the swimming and ab-toning that happens on the site now is far less interesting than whatever the Boumis used to do there. I do wonder where they moved, where they keep their fleet of parade vehicles, how any of it manages to make money for children's hospitals. I was heartened to see younger faces among the parading Shriners, though, and kind of hope for a resurgence of the whole thing. Hell, I'd join if they'd let me. I'd learn to play the calliope.

Baltimore has always been a hotbed of weird secret societies like this. The Masons have a gigantic temple in Guilford. And the first North American Oddfellows hall was here in Baltimore. The building I work in, as it turns out, was an Oddfellows hall, which might explain why the downstairs hallway gives me the creeps. At any rate, I've always thought there was something in the water here that led men to don fezzes and learn to do wheelies, risking hip-replacement surgery in the process. I hope that the Shriners never, ever go away.

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.